By The Body Of The Earth or The Sannyasin

What?

I never again found that great warm Power which seemed to be able to change everything. It had come and gone—gone or returned underground like a spring, in order to gush forth elsewhere, in another age, another place. And this interminable plodding outside, to find the moment again, this immense circuitous way for ploughing up matter, to clarify, to exhaust; and at each burst of light, that dark descent, as if one had to go over the whole way again, all the levels, all the forgotten recesses, the lost islands; and it is always the same circle but as if aggravated, accelerated also, round an invisible pivot: a major vibration which returns each time and seems to organise the slightest variation in order to ring out better its one imperious note—my name, my true name.

I have done everything, tried everything. I have meditated, walked, contemplated, but the contemplation was of no avail. With closed eyes, one goes elsewhere, in immutable joy which does not care a straw about what is happening below. One goes farther and farther away, higher and higher, starker, purer, into something more and more incompatible with the thickness of the earth and when I came out of it, I was like an ultra-sensitive radio set, so sensitised that the slightest coarse vibration put everything out of order: I imbibed fever with peoples' looks. I have walked and walked, lost myself in temples, bathed in crowds, known the immense goodness of people; I have knocked at the doors of the poor, begged, sung kirtans to the point of collapsing with dizziness in a clangor of cymbals and drums; but the single door did not open. I have heard incantations which ended up in a trance, black chants, drums and flutes which rent the night unveiling an even greater night, and ceaseless cicadas on the banks of rivers, as if light would burst out of everything at last, pierce right through, but nothing was pierced. I have worshipped, prayed to the gods of compassion, to terrible gods, to dreadful and naked Mothers painted in vermilion. I would even have prostrated myself before a heap of stones so great was my thirst to see the living god; but I found nothing greater than an old woman, one evening, who laid her forehead on a bare stone and collapsed with fatigue while repeating His Name. I have met wise men, madmen; I have known vagabonds who knew the future, but none who knew the secret of the present; recluses who knew the secret of the worlds beyond and the ineffable Plenitude, but none who knew the plenitude of the world here. I have seen little dark beings who gave great, brilliant powers, I have seen powerful men who captivated with a single look, but none was stronger than that small flame within. I have bathed in icy springs, in foul rivers, I have meditated with the dead on cremation grounds and done many strange things, but I have found nothing simpler than the cry of my heart. And at the end of everything, in the depths of everything, behind the darkness or the light, the ice or the fire, I encountered once more my thirst, my cry, my old question which was now even wordless, which was only a growing, hammering “what”, more imperious than all the drums and more piercing that all the cymbals of their sacrifices—quoi?... what?

And time passed.

Was I not also going to end up like Batcha's ascetic, shrivelled and dried-up in his spiritual ant-hill, with two great staring eyes—which stared at what?

Hardly had that thought come to me (or was it coincidence? But everything is a coincidence and a miracle and everything is decreed) than my life began to take another bent, as if a certain cry within, a tiny call, a small door which opens, were enough to change all the circumstances almost instantaneously; one passes onto another wave-length and everything is interlinked.

That day, a Nanga-sannyasi entered my life.

It was high up in the north where the snows are motionless. He arrived round the bend of a path, he was young and radiant, perhaps twenty years old; he was nude, covered with ashes like those of his sect, and went along sounding his chimta.¹⁹

—Ohé! Sannyasi, Shiva! Shiva!

—Ohé! Shiva! Shiva!

—Where are you going?

—Nowhere.

Then he laughed:

—I, everywhere!

We travelled together. He had the eyes of a child, he spoke without time or reason, sang stotras or remained silent for days at a time, and his silence was light like the mountain air.

—I think the gods love us, he declared to me one morning.

And the mist was still hanging over the cypresses.

—Ah?

—Yes, I feel them.

—You feel? How?

—That...

He scratched his head.

—They love me, so I love.

—Oh! love... love, I understand nothing of love.

—Then you understand nothing of yourself.

—Why?

—Because you are the one-who-loves.

—What do you know about it?

He leaned slightly towards me he had two little smiling dimples.

—Because you love!

We crossed mountain chains and icy passes, valleys of wild rhododendrons, sacred confluences seething with blue clay. He was always nude, except for a rag which he passed between his legs and attached to a string round his hips.

—Life is beautiful, friend, it is like Shiva's smile... so light!

After his bath in the morning, he rubbed his body with ashes and that was all. My orange clothes seemed like a pretentious ostentation, almost a disguise, next to him. I felt like chucking everything and going naked too.

—Oh! brother, are you not cold?

He smiled with a victorious air.

—Shiva himself covers me, he loves me!

We were on the bank of a torrent; there were pines, dolerites, an enormous cedar with a purple trunk; the sound of the gongs could be heard rising from the depths of the valley, and in the distance, above a thin, almost transparent pearl-grey mist, the ice seemed barely to float, tinted with pale gold, and as if even more eternal being borne by the sound of that frail little gong: tim-tim-tim, tim-tim-tim, three times, always three times, repeated indefinitely in the valley and so frail under the mist.

Then I took a handful of still warm ashes and rubbed them all over my body, from head to toe.

He looked at me open-mouthed as if I were committing... I do not know, a profanation, perhaps

—But you are a sannyasi!

—So what?

—So it is not your law.

He was stupefied.

—My law...

I felt like telling him off; but he was so nice, standing there scratching his head; besides, this body was so white in spite of the ashes that it looked like that of a leper. I plunged into the torrent and recuperated my wretched white man's skin and I will keep it to the very end—at my birth I must have put on the wrong skin by mistake.

—It is so cumbersome.

—Ah! you said it, brother.

He poked his fire between the stones. There was always a fire near him wherever he stopped; it was the law of his sect. And if the fire went out, he had to take to the road again, that's all.

—In short, I said to him, in jest, the last encumbrance is the body.

—You said it, brother, when one is free, one is done with the body!

This time, it was I who looked at him dumbfounded.

It was like a revelation. A revelation in reverse... I was standing there naked, perched on a stone in the torrent, and then there was that immutable ice, that feeble sound of the gong rising, rising from the depth of the valley,—so futile. I was scandalised, suddenly horror-stricken: the last encumbrance... Then I saw the whole picture: that valley-under the mist, that call, that cry of the dead, those lives which toil, which rise, that search for truth the truth—that burning ascension, and all that purified, sublimated existence straining towards the light—pour quoi... for what?

—For... what?

He started. I heard my voice like a clap of thunder. He was squatting on the ground, his hands on his knees, his chimta dangling.

—But what's the matter with you?

—Then one clears out, it's finished. One is free... into the fire with the rag.!

He had such a shock that his chimta banged against his pot of rice overturning it into the fire. For me, it was a thunderbolt from heaven which came crashing down on my head, a kind of black apocalypse. I looked at the tree, my orange scarf; I was going to hang myself—hang myself immediately, spit on that body, finish with it. A torrent of revolt, I raised my fist. He threw himself upon me.

—No, no, brother, not that, stop, what's the matter, but what's happening?

He was completely bewildered, he understood nothing. He simply sensed, like an animal. He stroked my forehead.

—Calm, calm, quiet...

I was clammy. In three seconds I was drained of all my energies, as if I had vomited up thirty years of meditation.

—Baba! you look like a bhout!²⁰

He drew me near him My eyes remained fixed on that tree. And suddenly I knew what had happened; I knew it, it was obvious: I could see that sannyasi hanging from the tree. And it was me. And then that leap into space. It had already happened. And I had come back to untie the knot. Everything turned on that second of revolt. That was the point, I was there; I had come back to pass the test. Oh! now I know the signs; by force of repetition I know what returns from the past—and they are not at all fabulous and romantic memories! It is a certain intensity of vibration; moments that are inflated with an invisible content, as if that particular second, that particular place, that particular incident were “charged”, crammed with a power of emotion or of reaction completely disproportionate with the fact. Then I knew: this had already happened. And the past did not at all consist of tremendous events, great or small characters, adventures, sensational places: it was simply that intensity of soul which remained as if clinging to a detail: the branch of a tree, the reflection of light on the sand, the sudden song of a child passing through fields of rye; a “something” which has a quality of sudden eternity and which impregnates the most futile gesture with an imperishable substance.

—Well, well, you are a curious sannyasi.

He looked at me. He looked at the overturned pot of rice in the fire, at the smoking wood.

—When one has bad thoughts, things go wrong all around one.

—Ah! that will do.

He shrugged his shoulders.

—It is simple, we shall not eat today.

—Eat?... But why do you want to eat! You want to feed that carcass?

He recoiled a step. Evidently I was an unexpected sort of sannyasi, perhaps poisonous.

—Why? You want to feed your body?

Then Björn's words came back to me: “Why should I continue to eat?...” And that also was like a door opening in the darkness, letting in a whole cortege of waves.

—Listen brother, I have no wisdom...

He stood there, all embarrassed in front of his fire, and so sweet in his desire to be good. I softened a little.

—What?

—I have no wisdom, brother, I know only one word which my Master told me; I must go all over the country on foot and when I have finished the whole tour, I shall meet my Master again and he will give me another word. And when I have made the tour several times, he will give me Wisdom. So, you see, I know nothing but I am happy because, one day, he will give me Wisdom.

My heart melted. I took him by the shoulder.

—And what is it, your word?

—That...

He lowered his eyes; he seemed to be blushing under his ashes.

—That, one must not tell. It is only for me, it's good for me only...

Then he raised his eyes with such candour... golden brown like mountain honey.

—He said: “Go and look at each thing as a secret.” That's all... Each thing as a secret. So I look and I look at the secret; I don't understand, but I look, the secret is there. Sometimes it is painful to look and not understand... but there is the secret, there is the secret; I look and look.

He picked up his pot, tightened his string and threw the rice into the torrent.

—Now, it is extinguished, we must be on our way.

—You must not sleep often, with your fire?

—Oh! one day, I shall be so much awake that I shall no longer need to sleep; it will burn always—my Master never sleeps.

We started out again on the path towards the plains. And it is exactly from that day that I started to go down within as well as outside.

We again found the odour of burnt earth and the humidity of exacerbated plants, and the cawing of crows and the motley crowds in a musty odour of sweat and saffron. We sank into the fervour of the August skies and the dust everywhere. My companion opened his eyes wide at everything, every plant, he looked at the secret, he questioned without questioning—and the secret was, I know, to let one's look dwell long on things, until the crust melted, then the look breaks out everywhere. Yes, but...

There was always that but.

—All that is very nice, but...

—Brother, he said, clasping my arm—and the sweat made little furrows on the ashes on his skin—you see these old cans on the road and the tender new leaves peeping between the stones...Sometimes, it seems as if everything is very tender, even the stones.

And he sounded his chimta:

—I am very happy.

That was all. He sounded his chimta and we continued on our way.

—Et après?... And after?

—After what?

He looked at me so sweetly; I shrugged my shoulders and kicked away the stones. And I do not know why, but I suddenly saw myself again, exactly the same, kicking away an old calabash on the deserted quays in that western port, and the puddles of water under the street-lamp, the Laurelbank at the second wharf. It was cold... old, and it was just the same—ten years like a second. The only difference was that I had not the same clothes. Ah! what is it that changes... what?... qu'est-ce qui change, quoi? And Mohini foundered in the red Tartarus: freedom, freedom... And then?

—Then what?

He started. We were near the ramparts of a city; there was an old cistern, with foot-worn granite steps, full of frogs. The night had fallen. Lotuses shone in the moonlight; he had lit his fire. I think I had a fever.

—... What, brother, tell me! I, too, have looked at the stones on the road and found something, but afterwards? That's what I am asking: afterwards?

—After... what?

—Yes, exactly, after!

—So what did you find? You say you found something.

—It was a long time ago, in the western countries, in Brazil.

There was a road near a river. It was the Rio das Contas...

He raised his nose in the air; he had thick, bushy eyebrows, he resembled my brother the gold-seeker in the forest. “We must find, Job, we must absolutely find...” And we had found the heap of gold and he had died on it.

—... The River of Pearls. I was looking at the pebbles on the banks of the river, and then it seemed to me so horribly futile—futile, unbearable—all those minutes which passed like that, for nothing, empty, as if that did not exist, as if one were dead—a cadaver on two legs, there. Then in a flash I saw all the roads I had gone up and down, those countries, those streets, those ports, all those futile steps, those thousands of minutes which do not exist... I wanted that to exist. So I looked at those pebbles,—looked until my head was bursting—at every pebble on the road, as if they were God-the-Father, the unique event of my life. I wanted to remember—you understand, not to live another second without remembering. Ah! I swear to you, there is one bit of road there which I shall remember through all eternity... And I went through it again everywhere: in Africa, in Asia, in the lorries, the boats, the cafés, the ports—until finally it burned all by itself like a flame an automatic memory like a fire. This is the fire which no longer goes out! And it was my wealth, my only wealth; I was a king everywhere with my fire—it burned, it existed; I couldn't have cared a tu'pence for the rest. It was my wife, my country, my companion; I was rich, I was full with my fire!

He looked at me flabbergasted, his chimta in his hand.

—And then?

—That's just it... there is no “then”.

He remained silent, troubled. And I felt a furore rising 'in me. He dropped his chimta:

—The devil is behind your words.

—So much the better. If there is the devil, it's already something!

—My Master said: “There is the great expanse, and one is free.”

—But I am free! I know that great expanse of yours, I go there at will.

He remained open-mouthed as though he were about to swallow the moon.

—Yes, there is a world up there, and one is free, and there are no more questions.

He said nothing.

—It is afterwards I am asking about, afterwards.

He recoiled a little behind his fire as if he were afraid of me. Of course, I did not have an ecstatic air or a white beard. Perhaps I had a devil inside, but free I certainly was!

—You speak angrily, you have no wisdom.

—Perhaps. But I close my eyes for a second—three seconds—and I am there, I don't care a damn about anything, it is perfect peace—peace, peace, a bournless life. And then I open my eyes; pfft! gone, everything is the same—the body ages, life decays, cold, fever, hunger, the beast, oh!... and all that is good for the pyre.

—My Master said: “One must save one's soul.”

—But, bon dieu, it is completely saved! It is free, eternally free; it is enough to remember and one streaks into the light—three seconds, I tell you. But life is not saved. The body is not saved; it is they who must be saved because they die t Heaven I have always, it does not need me to exist!... Or else we can all run off into beatitude and life is a lie.

—He said: “We are the sons of heaven.”

—Oui, par le corps de la terre... Yes, by the body of the earth.

He straightened up suddenly as if I had struck him; he crossed his legs, closed his eyes and went into meditation.

And in me there was that terrible vibration of anger. A wind of devastation. Then I understood that I was lost: if I moved, it was finished: my fist to the heavens, and I would hang myself... I stilled everything; I no longer moved. I became a nullity, like stone.

A snake slid into the cistern.

And at that moment, paralysed with furore, I saw something. “Saw” as one penetrates into a painting. I saw that that force of being, that concentration of energy and of light which one accumulates day after day, year after year, like an infallible accumulator which retains everything: the slightest syllable, the slightest cry, the smallest aspiration; that subtle fire endowed with power which is like our colour of being, our degree of soul, could change into its precisely opposite intensity of darkness, atom for atom, flame for flame, and one could become just as dark as one was illumined, because it is the same thing in reverse: one touches the precise shadow of one's own light. And in that second, I understood Björn's death. That Force—truly creative—instantly turns back upon itself in a correspondingly destructive intensity: it is one or the other, and it is the same thing, seen from one side or the other. When one abandons Truth, one enters instantaneously into death. In fact, when one takes to the path, one must not leave it by a hair's breadth, for the power of catastrophe is as great as the power of new creation, in the individual, in peoples or in the destiny of souls. And I saw also, but later, that the power of the reversal is not the “fall” one imagines, but the dynamite explosion of the Light which clears the path so that one can go further—where is the darkness? where is it?

He was smiling.

My furore had passed.

His body danced in the flame, blue-tinted with ash and moonlight; he looked like a Vedic god behind his curtain of fire. The frogs started to croak again in the cistern. A dog howled at the. moon. And everything was so fragile, and everything was eternal... Et tout était si fragile, et tout était éternel.

I closed my eyes, I too, could smile: one closes the lower door... one takes the key to the fields of light... And that evening, I found myself in front of the great. Contradiction.

Yes, one day, bodies open like flowers. One day, under the pressure of an inner fire, the shell of obscurity bursts open, the great captive bird opens its wings of victory, and one glides—infinitely, marvellously—through smooth, luminous plains, through drifting constellations, above bodies, above the blue spell of the mind. One glides into a pearly sweetness, one flies through light years; one has laid one's forehead on great snows of silence, left the tomb, the phantom, one has returned to one's real home. Oh! the deep breath of those expanses of light. And it is so pure, so simple: it is that and one breathes; it is that and one flows without limit, one becomes uncrumpled, one goes to the infinity of oneself; it is the peace of being at last what one really is, the great calm freshness of being in oneself—eternity, eternity like one second! Transparency everywhere like a million white lotuses under an invisible Sun.

And far, far below, a point of being. A fire. A very small fire which burns, which would have liked so much to merge, it also, into that immensity of light. A burning of being, a crying out—full of infinite gratitude because that exists, that fresh spring, that inconceivable marvel; full of an infinite thirst because that could not be here also, in a body. Oh! a truth which is not all cannot be the whole truth!

Ou bien quoi?... Or else, what?